Repairable phone implies level of technical competency. You're not the target audience. Target audience will have no problem installing alternative ROM

Is that really the market they are going for? I’ve dissected, rooted, etc but that hardly seems like a business play or a market of any significant size.

The ROM doesn't cover all of the software that runs on a phone to my understanding. We need truly open phones.

Custom roms are a half-solution unless Unisoc have solid mainline support in the kernel, so that it can be updated past the support period without hacking in blobs. Custom ROMs can also be less secure (and less useful as many applications annoyingly check for verity) if the manufacturer doesn't allow access to low level hardware security features.